Archive for the 'Little Feat' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

Bill Payne will perform during "Tracing Footsteps" at the Coach House. Photo by Polly Payne

There is likely to be a mix of sonic artistry, rock 'n' roll history, laughter and even tears when Little Feat singer-keyboardist Bill Payne and famed Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally share the stage for a unique program titled "Tracing Footsteps" at the Coach House on Sunday.

In addition to co-founding Little Feat with Lowell George in 1969, Payne has worked with a seemingly endless number of music greats. The Doobie Brothers, Jimmy Buffett, Emmylou Harris, Bob Seger, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and J.J. Cale have all featured his keyboard skills or songs on their classic recordings. He is also an increasingly-recognized commercial photographer.

"As it happens, he (Payne) has always been this band guy or side man and played with everybody in the world," said McNally, a veteran publicist and music industry consultant based in San Francisco. McNally is also the author of 2003's "A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead."

There was an embarrassment of riches for music lovers in Los Angeles Thursday night — concert-goers could choose between Pavement and Sonic Youth at the Hollywood Bowl, Spoon at the Palladium, McCoy Tyner at the Catalina club, Benji Hughes at Largo and Jamie Lidell at the Echoplex. While I can't speak for the others, those who opted to spend their evening with John Cale performing his 1973 work Paris 1919 at Royce Hall — the kickoff to this year's UCLA Live season — were treated to a very special night of music.

It's hard not to call Paris a lost classic. Cale's second album after leaving the Velvet Underground is one of those records that remains off most listeners' radar, yet once they hear it, they're hooked. Recorded in L.A. and backed by Little Feat, it's an elusive, contemplative, literate collection of songs dealing with, among other things, the last days of WWI -- or as the concert's title had it, “When past and future collide.” Needless to say, it left many Velvets fans scratching their heads and, even in the wide-open days of the early '70s, never received the kind of airplay or promotion needed to help it find a bigger audience.

As performed Thursday night by Cale plus a rock trio and the 19-piece UCLA Philharmonia, conducted by Neal Stulberg, the album remains vivid and fresh, with the ability to surprise. Cale took the stage in a gray suit and tie with a shaggy head of platinum white hair — he looked like a colonialist gone to seed or a slightly disreputable version of George Plimpton. The first set followed the album song-for-song, from the processional “Child's Christmas in Wales,” a memory of peace mixed with oddly violent imagery, to the ghostly soldier's lament “Antarctica Starts Here.” (Only “Macbeth,” a grand rocker that never really seemed to fit the concept, was moved from its place at the end of Side 1 to the last song of the set.)

It took a while for the band and orchestra to find the right mix; the wonderful drumming of Michael Jerome, for instance, lost some oomph due to plexiglass sound-dampening panels. Some of that was balanced out by the Victory at Sea bombast of “Endless Plain of Fortune,” although guitarist Dustin Boyer tended to overplay. The arrangements also didn't follow the album exactly — the proto-reggae “Graham Greene” sported a trombone right out of ska and a violin section that wouldn't have sounded out of place in a Cuban dance band, while the title song boasted a pompous French horn that pierced the ornate, Versailles-like strings.

Following an intermission, the second set ranged throughout Cale's career, from the sprightly pop of “Hello, There” to the slyly mournful “Hedda Gabbler” to his Grand Guignol revamping of “Heartbreak Hotel,” given a less over-the-top reading than on 1975's Slow Dazzle, with jittery drum machines and samples replacing the record's hulking guitars and sounding even creepier than usual.